Friday, March 30, 2012

It’s Sunday night and I find myself in a predicament. The
story I wish to write involves a mystery to which I never solved and I’ve
invested all of my time and thought into writing about this particular subject
matter. I am stuck but I have no choice but to plow forward. My wife found a Southern Black Racer (Coluber constrictor priapus) in our back yard in Lehigh Acres,
FL. It was dead with its head firmly entrenched in a hole in the ground. The body
was unscathed. I have no idea how this happened.

Ignore the “constrictor” part of the species name for the
racer. The snake most often uses its speed to chase down prey. Once in its
toothy grasp, it will eat its prey live rather than squeeze it to death as the
species name might imply. The racer is most likely to freak out those with
snake phobias. When threatened, it will rapidly shake its tail, causing nearby
vegetation to vibrate and simulating the sound, as best as possible, of a
rattlesnake. More commonly they will simply dart off with impressive zip. You
can’t really call it a slither. More aptly they tear off like black lightning.

None of this helps me come any closer to solving the mystery
of the snake with its head buried in the sand. I grab it by the tail and by its
midsection, attempting to retract it from the hole. A series of internal pops
discourages me from pursuing this tact. I switch to a shovel, which ironically
is how many snakes die. In this case I gently pry the sandy soil from under the
snake to discover that the hole was no deeper than the two inches the snake had
progressed. The snake had nothing in its mouth and nothing seemed to be hanging
on to the snake.

Had the snake chased after prey in an undiscovered
subterranean hole? Had the snake investigated a hole and simply got stuck? Or
had a predator chased it and the racer died trying to make its own escape
route? I don’t know and I’m left with a mystery and stuck with a story I don’t
know how to end.

Friday, March 2, 2012

That is what my 3rd grade teacher told me in
1978. Chemicals were killing the birds including Brown Pelicans, Cormorants and
other fishing eating birds. The year 2000 was a long time away and seemingly in
a galaxy far, far away and yet for my eight year old, Star Wars-obsessed brain,
the notion of extinction was real and saddening to me.

My teacher had oversimplified the problem but I wouldn’t
understand that until years later. In fact the ban on harmful chemicals, such
as DDT, years earlier had begun the reversal of misfortunate that many of these
birds had endured. DDT, an effective chemical pesticide used in the control of
malaria-spreading mosquitoes was considered to be the culprit in the decline of
many fish-eating bird populations. The chemical bioaccumulates in fatty tissues
of animals as it works its way from the base of the food chain, from plant, to
invertebrate, to fish, to bird. When the female birds would lay eggs, the DDT
inhibited calcium deposition in egg shells resulting in thin eggs that were
often crushed by the incubating adults.

After DDT was banned from use in the United States
in 1972, the chemical slowly worked its way out of the environment, including
wildlife and humans and the affected bird populations began to recover.

Thirty four years after my teacher’s apocalyptic prophecy, the
sight of an Osprey taking flight over a body of water in Florida is relatively common. I routinely
have the opportunity to watch Ospreys swoop down over the water and with
spiculed-talons, grab a fish to eat. The spicules are sharp spines that impale
their prey and make it easier for them to catch slippery fish. Nests are
conspicuous accumulations of hefty sticks in trees, on utility poles or on human-made
Osprey nesting platforms.

The population rebound for many of the species affected by
DDT and other chemicals is very encouraging. Yet I would say to the children of
today, the health of our ecosystems is still in jeopardy and unless we fix
drainage issues, stop nutrient overloads and prevent further habitat loss,
species such as the Wood Stork, Roseate Spoonbill and Florida Panther will be
extinct by 2030.

All animals have some warning system that protects them from harm. Rattlesnakes rattle. Bees Buzz. Dogs growl. Monkeys throw poop. If you...

.

Hey! Look at me!

I was born and raised just west of the Everglades. Growing up at the Florida Monkey Sanctuary, a 10-acre, private non-profit organization owned and operated by my parents.
My experience at the sanctuary involved not only working with hundreds of primates of various species, but also provided the opportunity to become immersed in the natural history of the area, where the sanctuary alone was home to Sandhill Cranes, Wood Storks, Indigo Snakes, River Otters and abundance of other native wildlife. Leaving the subtropics for colder climates, I attended the University of Vermont and graduated with a BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology. I returned to southwestern Florida and guided for the Everglades Day Safari from 1998-2000 before once again trading sandals for snowshoes in Vermont where I worked for six years as a Park Ranger at Lowell Lake State Park in Londonderry, VT. and for several years as the Director of the Vermont Institute of Natural Science in Manchester, VT.
Now I'm back in Florida and I’ve returned with a vengeance, which I keep caged like an angry monkey with a bucket full of poop and deadly accuracy.